Would you like an in-game parser?

[Reinha]

Honestly? It tells me that you lack awareness. If, after 900 runs, you still can’t figure out when Susano is casting/readying Stormsplitter, then that speaks to your lack of raid awareness.

If lack of raid awareness is a common reason why people struggle with content, what would be the proper content to train people? Is it better to have the first primals and savage bosses doable without much raid awareness to increase people's confidence and experience, or is it better to require more awareness in casual content (and possibly exclude some people from all group activities) and aim hard content to be only for the experienced? There has to be a piece of content which demands some raid awareness without being overly punishing.

Aphrael, if you set the boss as a focus target you'll see each mechanic being cast. It helps with preparing for damage and learning the fight. In primal fights like Shinryu where there are multiple enemy targets it is useful to position the enemy list somewhere where you can keep an eye on it, because the enemies' casts can be seen there too. As for the dice mechanic, that's actually a debuff you your character and you can see it there before the dice icon appears.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

If lack of raid awareness is a common reason why people struggle with content, what would be the proper content to train people? Is it better to have the first primals and savage bosses doable without much raid awareness to increase people's confidence and experience, or is it better to require more awareness in casual content (and possibly exclude some people from all group activities) and aim hard content to be only for the experienced? There has to be a piece of content which demands some raid awareness without being overly punishing.

I would argue the latter. Why? Because that creates a proper curve without upsetting players who do have the skills to handle such challenges. Dungeons have basically become entirely brain dead content you scarcely need a pulse for. Imagine if they pulled ideas from the higher floors of PotD—where priority mobs need to be taken down quickly, thus breaking up the monotony of AoE spam. Frankly speaking, mass pulls is only the norm because tanks want to feel like actual tanks. If I do a baby 3-4 pull, I won't even need a healer, let alone any cooldowns. Savage shouldn't be where you're developing raid awareness but where you test those abilities. I mean, if Savage were the developing grounds, what purpose do EX Primals even serve? Part of why people disliked how piss easy Susano and Lakshmi were is because it relegated them to pointless content. Omega Normal suffers a similar problem.

Put another way. I shouldn't be able to stand in AoE on any boss in Rabanastre yet I can eat Mateus' cleaves or practically everything the third boss does on Samurai, and heal with Bloodbath. What this does is make less experienced assume they can ignore mechanics. It's among the reasons people try to brute force so much. The game allows you to in virtually every piece of content. Weeping City remains a perfect example of what happens when the devs finally stop coddling. People got over it because they had to. Sure, plenty were carried but plenty others weren't. It doesn't help FFXIV does jack all to teach you an endgame rotation—which segues into another issue: if content is so easy Dragoons can get away with spamming 1-2-3-4-5. What incentive do they have to get better?

- Leveling dungeons should be the entry
- Expert should smack people for standing in AoEs and push tanks/healers who try to pull everything that moves (Make this a reward for when you start to outgear content)
- Normal mode trials should test mechanical awareness and CD management. (Garuda, Sephirot, Nidhogg and Shinryu normal are decent examples)
- Omega Normal push players harder (Comparable to what Lakshmi EX was for say, Exdeath. Titan Hard mode is another good example)
- 24 Mans should focus on mechanical awareness (Weeping City did this well)
- Extremes should be preparing players for Savage
- Savage is where you take all that knowledge and put it to the test

Currently, the vast majority of content I just listed is faceroll. People unwilling to improve shouldn't be rewarded. You want the best gear? Put in the effort to get it.

[Reinha]

I would argue the latter. Why? Because that creates a proper curve without upsetting players who do have the skills to handle such challenges.

Thanks for the well thought out response.

Regarding the difficulty curve you'd choose, do you think this would exclude a significant amount of people from dungeons and normal raids and would this be a problem for the health of the game? Increasing dungeon difficulty could either make it difficult to run with random FC/LS acquaintances which divides people further, but it could also make dungeons less boring to some and make people more interested in that content. Priority mobs and other dps checks would be a natural addition to more difficult dungeons and would motivate people to better their dps whether or not they use a parser. I would very much enjoy small party content which challenges one to play their job (including role skills) on a higher level.

I like your idea for content difficulties. I do wonder though, is the current reward system enough to motivate people to run content with an increased difficulty? Perhaps Exdeath could drop entry level weapons (315) if it had the same difficulty level as Lakshmi Ex, or the drop rates of primal mounts could be increased so people feel like clearing and farming extremes is more worth the effort when they are current.

[Tridus]

If lack of raid awareness is a common reason why people struggle with content, what would be the proper content to train people? Is it better to have the first primals and savage bosses doable without much raid awareness to increase people's confidence and experience, or is it better to require more awareness in casual content (and possibly exclude some people from all group activities) and aim hard content to be only for the experienced? There has to be a piece of content which demands some raid awareness without being overly punishing.

Well, Auran Vale is the hardest dungeon in levelling and expert roulettes combined, right now. It's from ARR. The main reason why it's harder is that you can't just zerg through and round everything up. The first room will kick you in the face if you attempt it. Compare that to something like Sirensong Sea, which has one pull that's kinda dangerous, and one boss mechanic that can actually kill you (stacking up Magic Vuln up too high). The rest of it poses no real threat at all to any group with a pulse as nothing hits hard enough or causes enough problems that the healer can't just heal through it. That's even worse in Kugane Castle, which although I enjoy the hell out of the idea of the place, it's hilariously undertuned and nothing is dangerous unless you triple pull. The last boss there has a mechanic, but it's incapable of killing you even if you totally fail it. It's virtually impossible to lose.

"Round up everything and AoE it" as the only mechanic in every dungeon gets stale pretty fast, and people just go on autopilot without paying attention. Then they hit something where you do have to pay attention and the brakes slam on real fast, because they've been trained by the game to not expect that. Some players will get over that mountain more easily than others, but it doesn't have to be that way in the first place.